As a solo-founder, why have you *not* started focusing on SEO?
There are millions of ways to start growing your product & generating sales
But something I've been curious about with founders is as the title asks:
If you haven't, why have you not started focussing on SEO?
Overwhelming? Don't know where to start? Don't know how to track progress? Don't think it's useful at all?
Let's hear it!
It's not necessarily the best channel for all products
For some of my products for example, competition is high and traffic not that high so it's more effective to focus on other channels first
Thanks for sharing!
At the end, you say "more effective to focus on other channels first" - for clarification, you mean to say that at the end, after those options are exhausted, SEO is the next step?
Cheers!
I can't answer for @Sheepp, but for some products, SEO will never be the best channel that you should focus on.
Fair enough! Plenty of other ways to drive growth that has a better ROI
Interesting topic @tomzaragoza
In my case, I'd like to be a lot better. But when I started I found the amount of effort required too high mostly because I initially didn't know where to start.
It pays off in the long run, no doubt. But also, only if you keep going.
An example that I struggled (and still struggle with) is backlinks. Would love to hear your thoughts on this.
Thanks for sharing, Youssef!
That's facts - pays off in the long run, but you have to stay consistent.
Being a dev, my favourite way to generate backlinks is to build useful mini-products related to my product and audience, and put it on yoursaas.com/your-app so backlinks of this app count towards the main domain
If you're not a dev, one thing you can do is go all out on content. Im talking going deep on content, something that is hard to replicate but is helpful.
The underlying strategy here is not to focus on "getting" backlinks, but building things that are helpful that people want to backlink to them.
Another angle could be acquiring traffic-producing websites related to your main business from places like Flippa. Then using that as a way to funnel people to your main business thru backlinks there. It's the meta-game of "buying" backlinks, but the benefit is you actually own the media. win win!
I just started this month an effort to improve my SEO, I have ran some experiments where I can see more users going into my landing page, but after a day or 2 that effect is lost, and the amount of users who visit my landing pages decrease.
So my goal is to rank better on google to get more organic traffic, but it's a challenge, I have learn some cool stuff on the process, which is always cool.
I use https://freetools.seobility.net/ and https://katlinks.io/ to improve my SEO
Awesome, thanks for sharing Victor!
You down to share something cool you learned along the way?
Sure!...
Think that it's a long-term game that is a big investment for something that's not yet proven to work.
I wrote an article about the compounding effect of SEO the other day actually but it didn't get much traction here on IH haha.
Lack of time, honestly.
With Zlappo, I found that optimizing my app/adding critical features actually moves the needle the most, so I focus on that.
It doesn't help that my app has built-in virality which sends over X number of leads consistently every month, so SEO has never really crossed my mind at this point.
Until you have some sort of PMF focusing on SEO is a "waste of time"
Last 3 years i have pivoted markets many times.
Finally ready to double down on SEO now that i have PMF (sort of).
Love this take - need to know first that what you're building is what the market wants
This clarified something for me - work backwards from what is already ranking and build for that audience. Almost like a lightweight proxy for PMF
That is also a strategy, especially if you like the audience.
🎯🎯🎯🎯🎯
Background: my day job is running a B2B SaaS branding agency, my side hustle is building branding + marketing tools for indie hackers.
like someone else mentioned, I need content + paying clients > blog for SEO for the short term, so I'm focusing on
Then I'm going to turn the tweets into blog content.
I LOVE writing, but I don't have blog post writing time rn.
awesome topic.
i've tried a little bit on my own, my first approach is actually bringing in a couple of views.
i want to focus on it more, but i don't really know where to properly start, and what the road map is like.
how to choose the keywords that might not be directly related.
does it not matter if the keywords are directly related, etc.
Cheers Gavin, thanks for sharing :)
What did your first approach look like?
i just don't know that much on the topic.
so i brainstormed a couple of potential keywords
also looked at other websites in my niche
and used Ubersuggest and Google Keywords to generate a couple of ideas for topics.
then i just went ahead and wrote something up
love it thanks for sharing!
As someone who gets 100% of his customers via SEO, I'm wondering the same.
For my SEO I use kwfinder, https://linkody.com and https://indexcheckr.com
Linkody looks useful, will give it a try. Though I'd recommend in future you disclose that you created two of those tools.
+1
side note, your handle @code is amazing lol
🤗 🤗 😊
🤝
I haven't started working on SEO because I haven't found good, low-hanging keywords to rank on on Ahref. I consider myself experienced enough at SEO, but since I have under 10 paying customers, I'm focused on cold DMs.
I hate cold sales and feel much more confident at SEO but I'm scared it might just not be the right thing for my app.
Btw, if you think I might be mistaking, feel free to check for yourself, I'd love to hear your thoughts on my case. App is exportator.com.
Go Capterra if you are B2B or PH if you are B2C (or other app stores) and do not lose too much time with this that early. If you have the luck to be in south european market just pick your phone (best chanel).
I really mean it : you have a product to build and a market to fit with. Do not defocus yourself too soon before validating 10k € MRR.
I’m not sure how to even track progress. Is SEO only blogs?
Alternative pages, feature landing pages etc all count towards SEO as well.
Can also have things like cheatsheets and free tools.
Is there some ultimate guide or course that explains and helps your SaaS with all of this?
Not that I have seen. Closest thing is probably https://www.swipefiles.com/
@coreyhaines has a few courses there and a community.
@volkandkaya covered it, there are other pages you can build, in addition to a blog, on your main website to benefit from SEO
Think of these landing pages as focused on conversion, and your blog can be more informational to draw people in to your brand (which you can then link to your conversion-focussed landing pages)
Mini-apps and tools can help as well!
You need content before you can do SEO on that content.
I make a web developer tool (SnipCSS) so I could create content about web development, but I'd much rather be making the product better.
There's ever s clear path. Some plan and handholding is always needed... I guess
Any ideas on the best seo tools for saas products?
Maybe not specifically for SaaS, but my all time favourite is ahrefs! Just a bit pricey is all
Yeah heard of ahrefs, it does seem to get a lot of positive press. I will defo give them a go near to launch. Thanks for the reply bro
no prob!